The spinoff exploits of Fear the Walking Dead now have a finish line set on the immediate horizon, with the show's upcoming eighth season confirmed to be its last.

The news arrives straight from AMC, which used the TCA press tour (via THR) to deliver cancellation news for The Walking Dead franchise's inaugural spinoff series. An upbeat statement was delivered by AMC Studios and AMC Networks entertainment president Dan McDermott, signaling the closing of the show's near-decade legacy. “It’s a truly exciting year for The Walking Dead Universe, as we conclude an epic journey on Fear the Walking Dead, which became one of the most successful shows in the history of cable television,” he expressed. However, there's still plenty of time until the freshly marked endpoint since the upcoming Season 8 will be split into two six-episode segments, with Part 1 set to air in May through June, leading to a climactic sextet set for later in the year.

Related: Fear the Walking Dead: Everything That Went Wrong With Season 7

The Walking Dead Franchise's Future

Consequently, while Fear the Walking Dead's run now operates on a countdown, the announcement from AMC wasn't exactly delivered as a funeral dirge. Indeed, the focus is quickly shifting to the array of new spinoff series set to eventually take Fear's place on the network's mantle. Those offerings include the long-gestating Daryl Dixon series, which will see star Norman Reedus' mothership show Season 1 veteran make a cross-Atlantic migration to France, showcasing an inherently European side of the ongoing undead apocalypse. While a release date has yet to be confirmed, the arrival of that series will reportedly follow the first part of Fear the Walking Dead's final season.

Fear also makes way for another spinoff whose April premiere is more imminent, The Walking Dead: Dead City. This effort will conjure a tandem featuring Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Maggie (Lauren Cohan), set in the walker-overrun streets of New York City. Of course, for longtime viewers of the main show, such a pairing is beyond surreal, seeing as Negan made one of the most memorable debuts in television history by brutally murdering Maggie's husband, Glenn, with a barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat. While the two have come to blows since that consequential incident, the passing years and various shared ordeals yielded an uneasy détente of sorts between the two after Negan seemingly turned over a new leaf. However, it remains to be seen how the two will get together in the Big Apple.

Related: How Fear the Walking Dead Sets Up Season 8

AMC premiered Fear the Walking Dead back in 2015, with the show serving as the first major expansion of the franchise from the main series. It provided a hitherto unseen glimpse of the onset of the mythos' outbreak, albeit set on the other side of the continent, in Los Angeles. Yet, that setting would eventually shift eastward, settling with dusty desolation in Texas. The series launched with Kim Dickens' Madison Clark as the de facto protagonist. Eventually, the character was given an ambiguously fiery fate in Season 4, leaving fans to believe that she perished. However, after years passed and the showrunners changed, Dickens returned for 2022's Season 7 in what was a surprise move that rejuvenated enthusiasm among many viewers. Thus, with Dickens' Madison seemingly back in the driver's seat, Fear heads to its finish line having made a full circle of sorts.

Fear the Walking Dead Season 8, Part 1 premieres on AMC on May 14.

Source: TCAs via The Hollywood Reporter